professional essay

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• TABLE OF CONTENTS

Professional Essay Samples

Sample essays for professional school—written by students applying for business, law, or medical school—are abundant online, and they also can be highly specialized. Many medical schools require two separate applications: one directly to the target school itself and one through the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) , both of which usually require essays. Both law and business schools also often require multiple essays of their applicants, with questions ranging from details about your personal background to questions asking you to write an essay exploring a controversial issue. Therefore, I provide just a few samples of professional essays here in the pdf link below, referring you to online sites in the “Self-Study” box below for further study and targeted samples.

For students applying to professional schools who desire further advice and samples, I do recommend three books throughout this manual, all available for purchase online:

• Mark Alan Stewart’s How to Write the Perfect Personal Statement .
• Donald Asher’s Graduate Admissions Essays .
• Richard Stelzer’s How to Write a Winning Personal Statement for Graduate and Professional School .

In addition to these books all having a well-established and positive reputation, they offer insights from the admissions officers themselves at professional programs, thus giving readers an inside track as to what will be expected of them in both the application essays and the overall application process. With each of these books costing less than the price of most professional school application fees, they’re all well worth the investment.

Overview of Professional Essay Samples

Pharmacy student sample.

The sample essay from a pharmacy student was written during the student’s sophomore year and before she had experience in the field. Therefore, she chose to highlight her attitude towards and seriousness about her future path of study.  She also discusses pre-pharmacy courses she has already completed and stresses her academic success.

Law School Student Sample

The student applying to law school to study environmental law immediately persuades readers of his commitment by telling a personal story of how environmental law affected his family business. He also traces his educational path from community college to a bachelor’s program, where he completed a technical senior thesis with ties to a government agency. With law schools just as interested in recruiting students with a diverse background and life experience as they are with seeking pre-law majors, this student builds a strong case for himself as a candidate in just one page.

Business School Student Sample

The two business application essays, written by the same applicant, are in response to questions posed by an MBA program, which is especially interested in how candidates take risks and overcome challenges. The writer handles the first question, which allows for one page to describe a personal risk and its impact, by vividly recounting a life-changing 3500-mile bike trip he took across the US with his brother at the age of 21. The second essay gives applicants two pages to describe a challenging team experience and their contributions to its success. Here, the writer has the advantage of having already worked in business for a few years after completing his bachelor’s degree, so he wisely turns to his most successful team experience at his company, where he was a project leader.

Short Medical School Student Sample

With medical school applications sometimes asking very focused questions with short answer responses, this student uses the small amount of space allotted to explain why she’s applying to med school by describing how she applied creative thinking to working with a disabled patient in a clinic. Here we recognize that the writer has the sensibility to respond individually to her future patients with respect.

For advice specific to writing essays for professional school, turn to targeted websites such as these:

The website thedoctorjob.com, which includes blog articles on writing personal essays for medical school

“Law School Personal Statements Advice” article from top-law-schools.com

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Getting College Essay Help: Important Do's and Don’ts

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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How to Write the Perfect Essay

06 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

You can keep adding to this plan, crossing bits out and linking the different bubbles when you spot connections between them. Even though you won’t have time to make a detailed plan under exam conditions, it can be helpful to draft a brief one, including a few key words, so that you don’t panic and go off topic when writing your essay.

If you don’t like the mind map format, there are plenty of others to choose from: you could make a table, a flowchart, or simply a list of bullet points.

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Thanks for signing up, step 2: have a clear structure.

Think about this while you’re planning: your essay is like an argument or a speech. It needs to have a logical structure, with all your points coming together to answer the question.

Start with the basics! It’s best to choose a few major points which will become your main paragraphs. Three main paragraphs is a good number for an exam essay, since you’ll be under time pressure. 

If you agree with the question overall, it can be helpful to organise your points in the following pattern:

• YES (agreement with the question)
• AND (another YES point)
• BUT (disagreement or complication)

If you disagree with the question overall, try:

• AND (another BUT point)

For example, you could structure the Of Mice and Men sample question, “To what extent is Curley’s wife portrayed as a victim in Of Mice and Men ?”, as follows:

• YES (descriptions of her appearance)
• AND (other people’s attitudes towards her)
• BUT (her position as the only woman on the ranch gives her power as she uses her femininity to her advantage)

If you wanted to write a longer essay, you could include additional paragraphs under the YES/AND categories, perhaps discussing the ways in which Curley’s wife reveals her vulnerability and insecurities, and shares her dreams with the other characters. Alternatively, you could also lengthen your essay by including another BUT paragraph about her cruel and manipulative streak.

Of course, this is not necessarily the only right way to answer this essay question – as long as you back up your points with evidence from the text, you can take any standpoint that makes sense.

Step 3: Back up your points with well-analysed quotations

You wouldn’t write a scientific report without including evidence to support your findings, so why should it be any different with an essay? Even though you aren’t strictly required to substantiate every single point you make with a quotation, there’s no harm in trying.

A close reading of your quotations can enrich your appreciation of the question and will be sure to impress examiners. When selecting the best quotations to use in your essay, keep an eye out for specific literary techniques. For example, you could highlight Curley’s wife’s use of a rhetorical question when she says, a”n’ what am I doin’? Standin’ here talking to a bunch of bindle stiffs.” This might look like:

The rhetorical question “an’ what am I doin’?” signifies that Curley’s wife is very insecure; she seems to be questioning her own life choices. Moreover, she does not expect anyone to respond to her question, highlighting her loneliness and isolation on the ranch.

Other literary techniques to look out for include:

• Tricolon – a group of three words or phrases placed close together for emphasis
• Tautology – using different words that mean the same thing: e.g. “frightening” and “terrifying”
• Parallelism – ABAB structure, often signifying movement from one concept to another
• Chiasmus – ABBA structure, drawing attention to a phrase
• Polysyndeton – many conjunctions in a sentence
• Asyndeton – lack of conjunctions, which can speed up the pace of a sentence
• Polyptoton – using the same word in different forms for emphasis: e.g. “done” and “doing”
• Alliteration – repetition of the same sound, including assonance (similar vowel sounds), plosive alliteration (“b”, “d” and “p” sounds) and sibilance (“s” sounds)
• Anaphora – repetition of words, often used to emphasise a particular point

Don’t worry if you can’t locate all of these literary devices in the work you’re analysing. You can also discuss more obvious techniques, like metaphor, simile and onomatopoeia. It’s not a problem if you can’t remember all the long names; it’s far more important to be able to confidently explain the effects of each technique and highlight its relevance to the question.

Step 4: Be creative and original throughout

Anyone can write an essay using the tips above, but the thing that really makes it “perfect” is your own unique take on the topic. If you’ve noticed something intriguing or unusual in your reading, point it out – if you find it interesting, chances are the examiner will too!

Creative writing and essay writing are more closely linked than you might imagine. Keep the idea that you’re writing a speech or argument in mind, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

It’s important to set out your line of argument in your introduction, introducing your main points and the general direction your essay will take, but don’t forget to keep something back for the conclusion, too. Yes, you need to summarise your main points, but if you’re just repeating the things you said in your introduction, the body of the essay is rendered pointless.

Think of your conclusion as the climax of your speech, the bit everything else has been leading up to, rather than the boring plenary at the end of the interesting stuff.

To return to Of Mice and Men once more, here’s an example of the ideal difference between an introduction and a conclusion:

Introduction

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , Curley’s wife is portrayed as an ambiguous character. She could be viewed either as a cruel, seductive temptress or a lonely woman who is a victim of her society’s attitudes. Though she does seem to wield a form of sexual power, it is clear that Curley’s wife is largely a victim. This interpretation is supported by Steinbeck’s description of her appearance, other people’s attitudes, her dreams, and her evident loneliness and insecurity.

Overall, it is clear that Curley’s wife is a victim and is portrayed as such throughout the novel in the descriptions of her appearance, her dreams, other people’s judgemental attitudes, and her loneliness and insecurities. However, a character who was a victim and nothing else would be one-dimensional and Curley’s wife is not. Although she suffers in many ways, she is shown to assert herself through the manipulation of her femininity – a small rebellion against the victimisation she experiences.

Both refer back consistently to the question and summarise the essay’s main points. However, the conclusion adds something new which has been established in the main body of the essay and complicates the simple summary which is found in the introduction.

Hannah is an undergraduate English student at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and has a particular interest in postcolonial literature and the Gothic. She thinks literature is a crucial way of developing empathy and learning about the wider world. When she isn’t writing about 17th-century court masques, she enjoys acting, travelling and creative writing. 

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Landslides in Southern India Kill More Than 100 People

Rescue workers struggled to reach isolated villages in the state of Kerala, where torrential rains have washed away terrain. The death toll was expected to rise.

By Sameer Yasir and Anupreeta Das

Reporting from New Delhi

At least 108 people were killed and dozens more injured in the southern Indian state of Kerala after days of heavy rainfall set off multiple landslides in a hilly region, in what government officials called one of its worst natural disasters.

The landslides in the district of Wayanad — a region whose natural, rugged beauty draws millions of tourists every year — uprooted trees, knocked down communication lines, submerged roads and washed away a bridge. Rescue operations were hindered by the region’s terrain, which made it harder to reach hundreds of residents in the areas that were hit the hardest.

“This is one of the worst natural calamities Kerala has ever witnessed,” said Pinarayi Vijayan, the chief minister of Kerala, in a statement. Mr. Vijayan said the damage to homes and livelihoods was “immense,” adding that his government had set up relief camps for thousands of people affected.

The death toll rose throughout the day as rescue workers recovered more bodies from under debris, and the number was expected to rise as the search continued, according to government officials. More than 125 people were injured.

“We are fighting nature at its worst,” said Akhilesh Kumar, an official with India’s National Disaster Response Forces who was overseeing the rescue operation along with the Indian Army and firefighters.

In his statement, Mr. Vijayan said the government was sending tankers of drinking water and rations and setting up temporary hospitals. He said there were efforts underway to identify the dead even as search teams looked for other victims of the catastrophe.

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• NATURE INDEX
• 09 March 2022

US–China partnerships bring strength in numbers to big science projects

• James Mitchell Crow 0

James Mitchell Crow is a freelance writer, based in Melbourne, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Quantum satellite Micius links with a station in Xinglong, Hebei province. The technology put China at the forefront of quantum communications. Credit: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Despite difficult relations between the United States and China, collaborative research between the two countries has remained resilient. But with young scientists entering the workforce amid heightened political tensions, concerns are growing that opportunities for large-scale, international projects could be curtailed.

Such joint efforts are not only important for accelerating scientific advances, but for strengthening ties between nations. A collaboration between cancer researchers in New York and Guangzhou aims to do both, by simultaneously conducting shared clinical trials in hospitals in the United States and China.

Modern cancer-drug development is focused on targeting the molecular mutation underlying the cancer growth, rather than the cancer’s location in the body. Precision medicine uses specific information about a patient’s tumour to better inform diagnosis and treatment. “If you really want a medicine to work, it has to be precise,” says Bob Li, a medical oncologist and physician ambassador to China and Asia-Pacific at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York.

Nature Index 2022 Big 5

The challenge is finding the right patients to participate in experimental drug trials. “New York is a big place, but if you slice a particular disease into 50 or 100 different categories, each subtype is very rare,” says Li, whose work includes building international collaborations between MSKCC and other institutions. Without a large pool of patients to draw from, recruitment can be a significant handbrake for cancer drug development, even though regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Chinese National Medical Products Administration are increasingly fast-tracking approvals.

To broaden the patient pool, Li approached Yi-Long Wu, president of the Chinese Thoracic Oncology Group (CTONG) in Guangzhou, with a view to collaborating on future trials. Because of the number of cancer patients in China’s large population, people with a targeted cancer subtype can be more rapidly recruited. “Clinical trials that typically take 10 to 15 years can be sped up to 2 to 3 years, with China’s participation,” says Li. “Wu’s work has already led to multiple FDA approvals of new lung cancer medicines.” The experimental lung cancer drug osimertinib, for example, took less than three years to gain FDA approval.

By drawing patients from both China and the United States, while sharing data between teams in real time, even greater gains could be made, says Li. MSKCC and CTONG are now activating two world-first clinical trials in both countries, which aim to test new cancer drugs. “Since Bob Li and I set up the MSKCC and CTONG partnership, we have had 43 hospitals join the collaboration,” says Wu. “We may be the model that international collaboration could follow.”

If cancer is ever to be beaten, says Li, the United States and China need each other. “If the United States and China work together, the rest of the world will come. And then you can really accelerate the pace of innovation,” he says. “I think it is realistic to say that we could perhaps see a cure for cancer in this lifetime.”

Growth slowing

Collaborative research between China and the United States remains strong . In the Nature Index, which tracks output in 82 selected natural-sciences journals , the two nations are each other’s most important collaborative partners. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of papers co-authored by China and the United States leapt from 3,412 to 5,213 — more than any other country pairing in the Index. However, year-on-year growth in US–China collaborative articles has slowed since 2018. “Joint publication data between the United States and China is still rising, although levelling off over the last two years,” says Zheng Wang, an economist at De Montfort University, UK, who studies cross-border knowledge production.

Collaboration often stems from young Chinese researchers spending time in the US system, forming professional relationships that they maintain upon returning to China. After almost 40 years of working together, Xingwu Zheng, an astronomer at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China, and Mark Reid, a radio astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published their latest joint output: a highly detailed visualization of the Milky Way . “It’s what you would see if you could fly out of the Galaxy and look back and take a picture,” says Reid.

The partnership dates back to an exchange programme between Harvard and Nanjing University, established in the 1930s. Zheng met Reid in the United States in 1982 as a visiting scholar, and the pair have been collaborating ever since. “There is a Chinese proverb that constant dropping wears away a stone,” says Zheng. “Our successes are attributed to our persistence. From knowing each other to becoming good friends, we love astronomy and understand each other.”

Mark Reid (left) and Xingwu Zheng, whose work revealed the structure of the Milky Way. Credit: Xing-Wu Zheng & Mark Reid BeSSeL/NJU/CFA

Revealing the structure of the Milky Way required long-term, multi-centre collaboration, which Reid and Zheng co-lead with Karl Menten, director for millimetre and submillimetre astronomy at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. The project’s origins date back to a one-month visit to Harvard in 2004, during which Reid and Zheng collaborated with postdoctoral student, Ye Xu, in testing a new technique to map massive young stars in distant arms of the Milky Way.

By painstakingly pinpointing a single star, then using Earth’s orbit to get a second reading from observations taken six months later, the team showed that they could triangulate to precisely establish the star’s location in space.

It was a process they would have to repeat 150 times in a 15-year effort involving 22 scientists from 8 countries, to reveal that the Galaxy consists of 4 tightly wound spiral arms, not 2 loose ones, as previously thought. “Having the existing relationship was critical,” says Reid. Fluctuating political tensions over the years have had no effect on the working relationship, he adds.

Collaborative research is increasingly important in astronomy, as huge new telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope , begin to generate vast new data streams. Competition, too, is key to driving innovation, particularly in emerging areas of research. Quantum science, for example, has benefited from huge investments from China and the United States, as each nation vies for dominance.

In 2016, with the launch of the world’s first quantum-enabled satellite , Micius, China catapulted itself to the forefront of quantum-secure communication after a relatively slow start. Coordinating with several ground stations in China, the satellite uses quantum-entangled particles to deliver potentially unhackable communications. In 2020, the team that operates the satellite, led by physicist Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, described how Micius enabled a secure method of quantum messaging to be sent between ground stations in Delingha, Qinghai province and Nanshan, Xinjiang province, some 1,200 km apart ( J. Yin et al. Nature 582 , 501–505; 2020 ).

The United States, which is racing to develop similar technologies through initiatives such as NASA’s National Space Quantum Laboratory programme, has long held the lead in quantum computing , thanks to major investments from technology firms such as IBM, Google and Microsoft. In 2020, Pan’s team claimed that its quantum computer, Jiuzhang, could rival Google’s system, Sycamore, accelerating competition between the two countries.

Shared assets

For almost a decade, Sokrates Pantelides, a theoretical materials scientist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, has been investigating two-dimensional materials with Wu Zhou, an electron microscopist at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Building relationships between the two institutions has helped the pair gain access to the best equipment, which China has been amassing in recent years.

In the past five years, for instance, the country has tripled its number of aberration-corrected electron microscopes — the kind Zhou and Pantelides use for their research — to more than 100, Zhou says. These machines can cost several million US dollars each, he estimates.

“The Chinese have excellent instruments,” says Pantelides, who in 2019 was among three recipients of a Chinese Academy of Sciences award for international scientific cooperation.

Some of the biggest pieces of US research infrastructure, however, such as neutron-scattering and synchrotron facilities, remain world-leading, says Zhou. “My collaborators in China will send samples [to the United States]. Sharing research infrastructure can help both parties.”

Jiang Lin from the University of California, Berkeley, who conducts collaborative energy and climate-related research in the United States and China, describes what he sees as a changing financial landscape. Three decades ago, the United States was the bigger research funder, he says. “These days, Chinese research is very well resourced. Each side carries its own weight.”

Source: Nature Index, Dimensions, United Nations, UNESCO, OECD

Banked trust

Energy research in particular has been affected by simmering political tensions , with scientists in the United States becoming more cautious about collaborating with Chinese counterparts, Lin says. According to Zhou, there is caution among researchers in China, too. “During [US President] Trump’s time, we were a bit hesitant to collaborate with my former colleagues at US national labs, not for our concern, but for how this might affect their jobs,” he says.

Trust is a crucial element of successful collaboration, regardless of the scale of the undertaking, says Zhou. “If we trust that we are going to establish a long-term collaboration, and we trust that we will credit each other’s work properly, then the exchange of ideas and data can be without reservation,” he says.

Banked trust may be a key commodity in the current political climate. Long-term research collaborations that predate current tensions between the United States and China are likely to be resilient, says sociologist Joy Zhang, who is studying China’s international collaborations at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. But there could be a decline in new cross-border collaborations, she says. “We may have a generation of scientists, who right from the start were pressured to be suspicious of their biggest collaborators,” Zhang says. Such mentality can be hard to change, should it become normalized, she says. “I think the impact of these tensions will be seen perhaps five years down the line.”

To track recent flows of young Chinese scientists to the United States — the potential seed events for future collaboration — Wang has analysed air traffic into US university town airports, before and after tensions between the two countries escalated in 2018, as a result of a trade war.

Even before the impact of COVID-19 on travel, passenger numbers from China had fallen, he says. “For airports near university towns, we see a significant drop of inflows from China, compared to pre-2018.”

Wang expects that shared challenges, such as mitigating the effects of climate change, will come to the fore again, however. “If green technology becomes the most important area after COVID, there will be increased demand for collaboration at a very high strategic level between the two countries,” he says.

There are signs that political obstacles may be easing, at least with regards to climate-related research, since the joint US–China declaration at the 2021 United Nations climate meeting in Glasgow, UK, for enhanced action in this decade, Lin says. “This could pave the way for more opportunities for collaboration, sanctioned by both sides, de-risked.”

But in the current political climate, he adds, nothing can be taken for granted.

Nature 603 , S6-S8 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00570-0

Additional reporting by Bec Crew.

This article is part of Nature Index 2022 Big 5 , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

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Faculty Positions & Postdocs at Institute of Physics (IOP), Chinese Academy of Sciences

IOP is the leading research institute in China in condensed matter physics and related fields. Through the steadfast efforts of generations of scie...

Beijing, China

Institute of Physics (IOP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

Assistant/Associate Professor, New York University Grossman School of Medicine

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the NYUGSoM in Manhattan invite applications for tenure-track positions.

New York (US)

NYU Langone Health

Assistant or Associate Professor of Neurosciences

FACULTY POSITION IN NEUROSCIENCES The University of New Mexico School of Medicine The Department of Neurosciences invites applications for a tenure...

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

University of New Mexico School of Medicine

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